Blog

The Katharine Gun Case

Katharine Gun, a British former government employee, faced two years imprisonment in England for the “crime” of telling the truth. She was charged with leaking an embarrassing U.S. intelligence memo indicating that the U.S. had mounted a spying “surge” against U.N. delegations in early 2003 in an effort to win approval of the Iraq war resolution. The leaked memo was big news in parts of the world.

England has no First Amendment that might have protected Ms. Gun. It does have a repressive Official Secrets Act, under which she was being prosecuted by the Blair government.